Books by Thorkild Hanghøj
Games and Education: Designs in and for Learning, 2018
We live in a time of educational transformations towards more 21st century pedagogies and learnin... more We live in a time of educational transformations towards more 21st century pedagogies and learning. In the digital age children and young people need to learn critical thinking, creativity and innovation and the ability to solve complex problems and challenges. Traditional pedagogies are in crisis and many pupils experience school as both boring and irrelevant. As a response educators and researchers need to engage in transforming education through the invention of new designs in and for learning. This book explores how games can provide new ideas and new designs for future education. Computer games have become hugely popular and engaging, but as is apparent in this book, games are not magical solutions to making education more engaging, fun and relevant. Games and Education explores new designs in and for learning and ofer inspiration to teachers, technologists and researchers interested in changing educational practices. Based on contributions from Scandinavian researchers, the book highlights participatory approaches to research and practice by providing more realistic experiences and models of how games can facilitate learning in school.
I folkeskolen spiller en 3. klasse Minecraft i dansktimen, mens to 7. klasser forestiller sig, hv... more I folkeskolen spiller en 3. klasse Minecraft i dansktimen, mens to 7. klasser forestiller sig, hvordan danmarkshistorien havde set ud, hvis Stauning var gået i krig mod Hitler. På sygeplejeuddannelsen behandler tre studerende den koldsvedende dukke Anne™, samtidig med at deres medstuderende overværer det dramatiske scenarie. Hvad gør de, hvis pulsen pludselig falder, eller feberen stiger? Det kan lyde som en leg, men faktisk er det meningsfuld læring i en gennemtænkt didaktisk ramme. Læreren trækker omverdenens praksisformer ind i klasseværelset og gør elevernes og de studerendes forestillinger om dem til udgangspunkt for undervisningen. Det er den praksis, forskere kalder scenariedidaktik. I Hvad er scenariedidaktik? gentænker bogens forfattere en række grundlæggende didaktiske perspektiver på skole og uddannelse. På den baggrund undersøger de, hvordan lærere i grundskolen og undervisere på videregående uddannelser kan forstå og bruge scenariedidaktiske tilgange, så læring føles som meningsfuld leg.
Helt på afveje - Nye fortællemåder, 2012
Denne bog er en flergangsbog til undervisning i dansk i udskolingen med tilhørende webressourcer.... more Denne bog er en flergangsbog til undervisning i dansk i udskolingen med tilhørende webressourcer. Moderne tekster og nyere fortælleformer overrasker, bryder med det traditionelle og udfordrer genrerne. I elevbogen Helt på afveje arbejder klassen med genrebegrebet og stifter bekendtskab med andre måder at fortælle på i fx hypertekster, sms-noveller, spilfortællinger, billedfortællinger og kommunikation på nettet.
Radiofortællinger tager afsæt i radiomediets historie og dramaturgiske virkemidler. Bogen lægger ... more Radiofortællinger tager afsæt i radiomediets historie og dramaturgiske virkemidler. Bogen lægger vægt på radiomontagens og radiodramaets udtryksformer, og de tre kapitler præsenterer: radiomediet og radiohistorie - fra krystalapparat til digital radio radiomontager som dokumentarisk genre med fokus på den gode fortælling radiodramaet som selvstændig kunstform med eget scenografisk udtryk Radiofortællinger indeholder en lang række opgaver, redskaber og eksempler. Opgaverne lægger op til at arbejde på tværs af danskfagets hovedområder sprog, litteratur og medier, og der er konkrete oplæg til tværfagligt projektarbejde. Radiofortællinger er blevet til i et samarbejde med DR Multimedie, som har produceret en dobbelt-cd med de fire radiodramaer, der indgår i bogen. Radiofortællingers dobbelt-cd med fire radiodramaer kan købes på www.dr.dk/netbutik. Se også www.dr.dk/radiofortaellinger.
I forlængelse af gymnasiereformens krav om integration af nye medier i dansk beskrives med fokus ... more I forlængelse af gymnasiereformens krav om integration af nye medier i dansk beskrives med fokus på spændingsfeltet mellem samtidslitteratur og mediernes udtryksformer de nye mediers fortælleform, fortællingernes indhold, og hvordan de traditionelle og de nye medier præger hinanden
articles by Thorkild Hanghøj
Language and Education, 2024
Brainstorming activities are quite common in L1 education. However, limited attention has been pa... more Brainstorming activities are quite common in L1 education. However, limited attention has been paid to the concrete unfolding of students’ idea development as a temporal, multimodal, and collaborative process. In this article, we explore how a group of four upper primary students in Year 5 (age 11–12) design a board game in a teaching unit on young people’s communication and toxic language use on social media. The unit was part of an intervention carried out in a study on game-based learning in the school subject Danish L1. Our detailed analysis shows how the students’ development process involved an interplay of different timescales at the micro, meso, and macro level, and a use of different semiotic resources such as spoken and written language as well as drawn sketches for a game board. The layers of meaning expressed through the students’ dialogic talk resulted in a metaphorical chain of reasoning, where the students’ initial loose idea was gradually transformed into a final game concept. This reasoning across modalities was enforced through the choice of bringing in paper and pen for drawing. The study concludes by discussing how we can understand idea generation as a non-linear multimodal process in the L1 classroom, which may have implications for other productive tasks.
Nordic Journal of Digital Literacy, 2022
The 1990s and early 2000s saw the publication of several studies and special issues on design-bas... more The 1990s and early 2000s saw the publication of several studies and special issues on design-based research (DBR) by prominent scholars within the field of educational technology (e.g., van den Akker, 1999; Design-Based Research Collective, 2003; Barab & Squire, 2004; Cobb et al., 2003; Brown, 1992). Taken together, these scholars described DBR as a new methodological approach for conducting research through a combined approach to design interventions and theory generation.
This first wave of DBR researchers, based mainly in the US, raised numerous methodological issues, which were discussed and remained an open invitation for further development in the years to follow. One researcher, Chris Dede, pointed out how DBR lacked a coherent
understanding of the standards for what constitutes quality of the approach; he criticised DBR for being promoted as the ‘Swiss army knife’ (Dede, 2004, p. 106) of methods without a sound, theoretical foundation. This metaphor has somewhat foreshadowed things to come.
Twenty years later, DBR has now become a mainstream methodological approach to conducting design interventions with educational technology in the US, in Europe, and, in particular, the Nordic countries. As a recent (Danish) example, the LEGO Foundation has funded 12 Ph.D. projects, which all study different aspects of playful learning by using DBR
as a methodological approach Playful Learning <https://playful-learning.dk/forskning/>. There have been attempts to further develop DBR, for example, by describing how projects should strive to conduct more effective, sustainable and scalable projects (Fishman et al.,
2013). Other scholars who have attempted to develop DBR draw on methods from speculative design, emphasising the transformational element of DBR (Ehret et al., 2019), thereby pushing the design element forward.
Nordic Journal of Digital Literacy, 2022
Design-based research (DBR) emphasises the importance of developing and refining design principle... more Design-based research (DBR) emphasises the importance of developing and refining design principles when conducting educational design experiments. However, a review of the DBR literature has shown that there is a lack of clarity as to how design principles are described and applied. In this paper, we introduce a model for articulating design principles, and enabling analysis and discussion of how these might be challenged and undergo transformation during DBR processes in local educational settings. The analysis is based on examples derived from two DBR projects relating to digital technologies. The first example is taken from a large-scale intervention project that demonstrates the importance of teachers' different dialogic approaches to teaching design thinking with Scratch. However, the rationale of large-scale project design does not allow for the integration of this emerging knowledge. The second example focuses on how a practitioner-researcher faces and manages preservice teachers' preoccupation with the curriculum, when trying to enact a design principle in a lesson within the module "Technology comprehension and digital bildung" with playful approaches to learning. The two examples illustrate how the presumably linear process of articulating design principles and gradually refining them through design experiments in practice should be seen as a far more "messy" or contingent process than is presented in most DBR methodologies. We raise the case that the realisation of design principles must address possibilities for achieving (and not achieving) agency among local educators and students. This points to a pragmatic need for rethinking and reconstructing DBR approaches in ways that pay more attention to the messiness of local adaptations and the emergence of new design principles.
L1-Educational Studies in Language and Literature, 2022
A fairly large body of research has documented how digital games can be used in L1 education. How... more A fairly large body of research has documented how digital games can be used in L1 education. However, there is still a lack of detailed studies on how literacy teachers go about teaching with games as multimodal texts in the classroom. Revisiting earlier empirical work on the use of the sandbox game Minecraft in primary school, the aim of this paper is to explore how a specific game challenge is enacted in practice as seen from a dialogic perspective. Drawing on theories on games and literacies, dialogic education, and teachers as professional practitioners, the paper presents the Game as Educational Challenge (GEC) model in order to understand how L1 teachers frame specific game challenges and facilitate dialogue with the students in relation to their game experiences. The model is used to reanalyse empirical examples of how teachers from three primary schools adopted a teaching unit with Minecraft through different pedagogical approaches. The findings show not only how the teachers' framing of the game challenges reflected their familiarity with the game, but also how they taught and related the game challenges to curricular aims in different ways. Moreover, it is found that the teachers negotiated authorial positions quite differently when facilitating classroom discussions with students about their game experiences.
L1-Educational Studies in Language and Literature, 2022
Nintendo Switch to play a game about milking a cow. The smell of Doritos permeates the room...you... more Nintendo Switch to play a game about milking a cow. The smell of Doritos permeates the room...youth are sitting against the back wall, playing on a Switch. Two are playing; five are watching. Another runs over to watch. Approximately eight [additional] youth are watching game play on the large screen...As I write this, the combination of players and observers shifts; someone stands, someone moves, someone crouches." (Field notes, youth videogaming in a public library in the northeastern United States)
L1-Educational Studies in Language and Literature, 2022
In this comparative systematic review, we analyse how the use of digital games inside and outside... more In this comparative systematic review, we analyse how the use of digital games inside and outside school settings might support primary and secondary students' literacy and language learning in relation to first language (L1) and second language (L2) educational contexts. Our findings indicate widely different patterns from utilising diverse game aspects, theories, and research methodologies in relation to the two different subject areas, which show that they are less convergent than what often is suggested in research that compares the two subjects in a globalised world. The L1 studies indicate positive findings with mainly commercial games in relation to writing, multimodal production, critical literacy, and, partly, to reading. The L2 studies report positive findings with educational games in relation to the investigated language skills (vocabulary, reading, and writing), though with an increasing number of studies conducted in outof-school settings examining commercial gaming practices. We discuss the findings from the two K-12 subjects using a cross-disciplinary perspective, and we suggest directions for future research.
Electronic Journal of e-Learning, 2020
This paper presents empirical findings from a qualitative study on Minecraft as a mathematical to... more This paper presents empirical findings from a qualitative study on Minecraft as a mathematical tool and learning environment. Even though Minecraft has been used for several years in classrooms around the world, there is a lack of detailed empirical studies of how students learn subject-related content by working with the game. This study is based on a design experiment with an inquiry-based teaching unit for fifth graders, which focused on using the coordinate system embedded in Minecraft, as a means to navigate and explore the game in order to solve mathematical problems. Based on student interviews, we explore how the students experienced and switched to new perspectives on mathematical knowledge through their participation in the teaching unit. Using thematic analysis, we explore data from six group interviews. The theoretical framework is based on domain theory, dialogical theory and notions of students' mathematical agency. The key analytical findings regard the students' experience of the coordinate system as part of both the academic domain of mathematics and their everyday domain of playing Minecraft, how they actively use the coordinate system to improve play in Minecraft and how they experience new ways of participating in mathem s by offering design principles for the future use of computer games in mathematics education.
Nordic Journal of Literacy Research, 2020
The aim of this paper is to present findings from a study which is part of an ongoing Design-Base... more The aim of this paper is to present findings from a study which is part of an ongoing Design-Based Research project which explores how students can transform their everyday experiences with and attitudes towards games into game journalism within the context of Danish as a subject. Based on a theoretical framework combining domain theory with Ivanič’s theory of writing as identity construction, we analysed selected student articles and student interviews from four secondary
classrooms (Grades 7–9). The findings show that some students mainly positioned themselves through a personal discourse, which was highly influenced by their positive, negative or ambivalent attitudes to their chosen game journalistic topics. Other students mainly positioned themselves through a professional journalistic discourse by means of critical reflection and representation of multiple perspectives on their topics. Based on the students’ high level of engagement in the writing
process and the wide range of possible selves adopted by the student writers, we concluded that games and game culture represent a topic well-suited for transforming students’ everyday experiences and attitudes into journalistic texts.
Laering og medier, 2019
Research on the educational use of digital games has been going on for several decades and shows ... more Research on the educational use of digital games has been going on for several decades and shows positive results in terms of increased motivation and learning outcomes. However, the challenges and possibilities of using games in education are often unclear. In this paper, I will briefly define games and summarise the research on games and learning. Next, I will provide an overview of Danish research on four different approaches to teaching with digital games: 1) the use of learning games, 2) the use of commercial games, 3) the use of game elements in non-game contexts (gamification), and 4) working with design of games. I will provide examples on Danish research, including articles from Læring Og Medier as well as from my own research. The aim of is to present an overview of the Danish research within the field, which can contribute to qualifying the selection and facilitation of games for educational purposes.
British Journal of Educational Technology, 2018
Can the challenges encountered in cooperative video games encourage classroom inclusion? And can ... more Can the challenges encountered in cooperative video games encourage classroom inclusion? And can this experience be translated into curriculum engagement? This study describes a 3 week intervention with game-based learning activities in eight lower secondary classrooms (n = 190). The intervention combined the use of the co-op action role-playing game Torchlight II and analogue gamification aimed at including 32 students challenged by social difficulties and lack of motivation. The video game was used to create more inclusive classrooms by increasing students’ opportunities for participation through collaboration in teams. The students also participated in game-related Danish (L1) and Mathematics activities. Effects on social well-being, learning and motivational patterns were measured through teacher assessment combined with the Children's Perceived Locus of Causality-scales. The results show multidimensional effects including positive impact on at-risk students’ well-being and reduced experiences of external regulation to participate in Mathematics and Danish. The qualitative analysis not only confirms the positive findings, but also shows how the intervention created ambiguities surrounding the relationship between game activities and curriculum-related assignments. The findings indicate that the impact of game-based classrooms is not due to their fun element, but rather how they enable reframing of social participation and students’ engagement with the curriculum.
Learning Tech, 2017
På trods af den stigende udbredelse af computerspil i skolen findes der kun begrænset forskning, ... more På trods af den stigende udbredelse af computerspil i skolen findes der kun begrænset forskning, der konkret undersøger, hvad det kræver at bruge spil i undervisningen. Fokus for denne artikel er derfor at beskrive, hvad det vil sige at være en spilkompetent lærer. Det vil sige, hvordan man som lærer skal kunne udvælge, afprøve, spille, forstå, iscenesætte, facilitere og evaluere brugen af spil i undervisningen. Læreres spilkompetence kan beskrives som en kobling af to praksisformer, der dels handler om at udvise game literacy (“spilkyndighed”), dels handler om gamemastering, som er lærerens didaktiske evne til at kunne iscenesætte spilscenarier i undervisningen. Artiklen gennemgår en række empiriske eksempler på game literacy og gamemastering i forhold til brugen af komplekse computerspil som Minecraft og Torchlight II i undervisningen. Til sidst opsummerer vi didaktiske principper for, hvad det kræver at være en spilkompetent underviser.
L1 - Educational Studies in Language and Literature, 2015
In recent decades, several Scandinavian research projects have had an explicit focus on how techn... more In recent decades, several Scandinavian research projects have had an explicit focus on how technology intervenes in L1 (or so-called Mother Tongue Education) practices in Swedish, Norwegian and Danish educational contexts, and how this may impact on understanding of the subject. There is currently no systematic overview of the documented possibilities and challenges related to the use of technology in L1. At the same time, there is terminological confusion in use of ‘technology’ and related concepts in L1. Finally, there is a general lack of critical reflection on the relation between technological developments, political rhetoric, and the development of L1 teaching and learning as a social practice related to specific contexts and actors. Thus, the paper attempts to answer three interrelated research questions: 1) what do we mean when we talk about ‘technology’ in L1?; 2) based on a systematic review of empirical studies, what characterizes the research field?; and 3) for discussion, which broader implications does the review suggest for a rethinking of L1 in terms of practice and research? Introducing the notion of educational boundary objects, a theoretical framework is developed, which suggests four metaphors for understanding technology within L1: as a tool, as media, as socialization, and as literacy practices. These are found useful for analyzing and comparing both theoretical perspectives and empirical research on L1. A key finding of the study is that, although the included research is characterized by a large degree of diversity, the conceptualization of technology as media is a dominating approach which downplays aesthetic, critical and tool-oriented perspectives. Another finding is the large number of studies that focus on student practices within L1 and the relationship to out-of-school literacy practices. A final finding is the emphasis on teacher uncertainty regarding how and why to integrate technology within existing paradigms of the subject. This calls for further research on how technology may be justified in L1 practice, including various forms of teacher education.
Cursiv, 2013
It og medier som graenseobjekter i danskfaget med computerspil som eksempel Hanghøj, Thorkild Pub... more It og medier som graenseobjekter i danskfaget med computerspil som eksempel Hanghøj, Thorkild Published in: Cursiv Publication date: 2013 Document Version Tidlig version også kaldet pre-print Link to publication from Aalborg University Citation for published version (APA): Hanghøj, T. (2013). It og medier som graenseobjekter i danskfaget: med computerspil som eksempel. Cursiv, (12), 103-116.
Uploads
Books by Thorkild Hanghøj
articles by Thorkild Hanghøj
This first wave of DBR researchers, based mainly in the US, raised numerous methodological issues, which were discussed and remained an open invitation for further development in the years to follow. One researcher, Chris Dede, pointed out how DBR lacked a coherent
understanding of the standards for what constitutes quality of the approach; he criticised DBR for being promoted as the ‘Swiss army knife’ (Dede, 2004, p. 106) of methods without a sound, theoretical foundation. This metaphor has somewhat foreshadowed things to come.
Twenty years later, DBR has now become a mainstream methodological approach to conducting design interventions with educational technology in the US, in Europe, and, in particular, the Nordic countries. As a recent (Danish) example, the LEGO Foundation has funded 12 Ph.D. projects, which all study different aspects of playful learning by using DBR
as a methodological approach Playful Learning <https://playful-learning.dk/forskning/>. There have been attempts to further develop DBR, for example, by describing how projects should strive to conduct more effective, sustainable and scalable projects (Fishman et al.,
2013). Other scholars who have attempted to develop DBR draw on methods from speculative design, emphasising the transformational element of DBR (Ehret et al., 2019), thereby pushing the design element forward.
classrooms (Grades 7–9). The findings show that some students mainly positioned themselves through a personal discourse, which was highly influenced by their positive, negative or ambivalent attitudes to their chosen game journalistic topics. Other students mainly positioned themselves through a professional journalistic discourse by means of critical reflection and representation of multiple perspectives on their topics. Based on the students’ high level of engagement in the writing
process and the wide range of possible selves adopted by the student writers, we concluded that games and game culture represent a topic well-suited for transforming students’ everyday experiences and attitudes into journalistic texts.
This first wave of DBR researchers, based mainly in the US, raised numerous methodological issues, which were discussed and remained an open invitation for further development in the years to follow. One researcher, Chris Dede, pointed out how DBR lacked a coherent
understanding of the standards for what constitutes quality of the approach; he criticised DBR for being promoted as the ‘Swiss army knife’ (Dede, 2004, p. 106) of methods without a sound, theoretical foundation. This metaphor has somewhat foreshadowed things to come.
Twenty years later, DBR has now become a mainstream methodological approach to conducting design interventions with educational technology in the US, in Europe, and, in particular, the Nordic countries. As a recent (Danish) example, the LEGO Foundation has funded 12 Ph.D. projects, which all study different aspects of playful learning by using DBR
as a methodological approach Playful Learning <https://playful-learning.dk/forskning/>. There have been attempts to further develop DBR, for example, by describing how projects should strive to conduct more effective, sustainable and scalable projects (Fishman et al.,
2013). Other scholars who have attempted to develop DBR draw on methods from speculative design, emphasising the transformational element of DBR (Ehret et al., 2019), thereby pushing the design element forward.
classrooms (Grades 7–9). The findings show that some students mainly positioned themselves through a personal discourse, which was highly influenced by their positive, negative or ambivalent attitudes to their chosen game journalistic topics. Other students mainly positioned themselves through a professional journalistic discourse by means of critical reflection and representation of multiple perspectives on their topics. Based on the students’ high level of engagement in the writing
process and the wide range of possible selves adopted by the student writers, we concluded that games and game culture represent a topic well-suited for transforming students’ everyday experiences and attitudes into journalistic texts.
Global Conflicts at various secondary schools, this article explores how educational gaming can be understood as a complex interplay between four knowledge forms – i.e. students’ everyday knowledge (non-specialised knowledge), the institutionalised knowledge forms of schooling, teachers’ subject-specific knowledge (specialised knowledge forms), and game-specific knowledge forms such as professional journalism, which is one of the inspirations for the game scenario. Depending on how the GC series was enacted by different teachers and students, these knowledge forms were brought into play rather differently. More specifically, several students experienced genre clashes in relation to their expectations of what it means to play a computer game, whereas other students experienced emerging genres – e.g. when one student was able to transform the game experience into a journalistic article that challenged her classmates’ understanding of journalistic writing.
Despite this development, litt le is known about how to use games in university teaching, which emphasises the need for developing a didactic frame for such use. To contribute to the development of a game didactics, two cases are presented to describe possible approaches to both a) teaching with games while using the game as a method, and b) teaching about games as a means for learning. The key issue of this article, then, is to provide didactic means for combining both content and method while teaching with games.
activity – it is however crucial to be aware of how moods occur and what their optimal conditions are. Following Lave and Wenger (1991), participation in particular is essential. Learning this, the community of practice becomes crucial for learning the meanings of different moods as they emerge through because it is through the shared practices it becomes possible. This perspective has two dimensions: practices and moods. Practice is the concept of all the doing in the activities. Moods are the particular concept of sense and feeling of being, which is what we are drawn to when we are playing or gaming.
insights. The authors offer some guiding principles by which researchers can navigate in such a methodological setting. The principles are based on experiences from three research and development projects at Learning Lab Denmark and illustrate the multitude of challenges to be faced, when balancing the processes of product development and the generation theoretical insights.
Suggested topics include but are not limited to:
- Theoretical frameworks for conceptualising dialogic perspectives on games and learning
- Methodological approaches for studying or assessing dialogical learning in and around games
- Different pedagogical approaches to facilitating game-related dialogue in educational contexts
- How different game elements and game design features may support (or constrain) dialogical learning. Including both analogue and digital game formats.
- How to design games or game environments, which enable different dialogical perspectives among participants.
- Empirical studies investigating teachers' use of digital games as contextual resources for dialogical teaching.